2013/07/28

Another trick I have found is to solder droppers to every length of track and point (switch).. Thus the rail joiners only hold and or insulate the joins. No reliance at all on the fish plates carrying power. Although this slows things down, it should protect me from dead spots in the future. The soldered droppers are all connected to the rail close to one end between the fourth and fifth sleeper. This allows the flex track to bend without catching on the solder points.

clean the side of the rail and solder a small tab first then tin the wire and join it to the solder pad.

My standard wiring is black to the outside and red to inside on single lines. However here I have introduced other colours to differentiate between all the different tracks at this point.

Well I guess comparing this picture with a similar one taken of this location,last week shows this leopard is not changing his spots.Although the permanent track was laid correctly, I fortunately thought a little more about the temporary diversion. In fact something had been worrying me about it for a few weeks. Last night I dreamed about it and understood what I was doing wrong after entering the studio after breakfast.Because the temporary track was entering the Coal Siding from the Albury end, I needed to swap the sides that the BG and SG travelled. The SG normally travels on the right of the BG but on the diversion it must travel on the left, to align correctly with the track layout at Coal Siding. As the temporary diverge was using second hand Peco Code 100 recovered from an old Layout built in 1985 and pulled down in 95, and stored since. It was not too big a deal. To fix the problem. However it did take me all day to line everything up again.

The diamond had to be slightly relocated to allow the installation of a curved point that was also ex the old layout. First I shimmed up the guard rails and soldered droppers on to the outside rails installed links to the blades and cleaned it up before installing it. Also cut out some broken sleepers and replaced them. Should work fine and tested RP25 and 88 wheels and they were fine.

The curved point allowed the 2 inch centres to be maintained.

Anyway another day and a little bit closer to being connected to Coal Siding Yard.

Beginnings (Blog starts here)

About my Railway

The Australian National Railways was established by the Whitlam Federal Government following a commitment made in the 1972 election to invite the states to hand over their railway systems to the federal government. In July 1975 Australian National Railways was formed taking over the operations of the federal government owned Commonwealth Railways.

The state governments of South Australia and Tasmania whose railway systems were deeply in debt, accepted. During the next two years discussions between these two states and the federal government resulted in a number of staffing and operating agreements being made that resulted in all South Australian Railways services (except for the Adelaide metropolitan passenger network) and all Tasmanian Government Railways services transferring to Australian National Railway in March 1978, the latter being re-branded AN Tasrail.

At first Victoria declined to hand over its Railways, however a change of Government after Bolte retired meant Victoria could be absorbed into AN as well. Despite doing everything they could to tarnish ALP leader Clyde Holding, The ALP were able to defeat Hamer who was seen to be just another Bolte, doing more of the same into the future.

Clyde Holding handed over Victorian Railways to the Commonwealth where it prospered as a division of AN retaining its VR colours until later when AN decided to re-brand it as V/Line.

My Railway thus reflects what could have been ;)And of course National Rail (Pacific National) has no place in my little scenario. Australian National was never privatised and has continually taken East Coast loads off the Highways. As well many branch lines were upgraded and Whitlam's policy of decentralisation actually moved employment to towns with a ready pool of workers, which of course took the pressure of Melbourne which was starting to expand as bush kids moved away from the Country in search of education and employment ( just as Gough Whitlam envisaged it would do)Rod Young

N452 (Background photo)

At Wodonga after being towed into loco following my Kelly Street Accident. A semi load of dog food ran the level crossing derailing the 1220 Down Pass

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